


Shattered pieces will remain

by EnlacingLines



Series: But I have to let go [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnlacingLines/pseuds/EnlacingLines
Summary: It's just a crush. Nothing more, nothing heavier.A season 4 compliant one shot for the monthly Klance prompt 'crush'.





	Shattered pieces will remain

**Author's Note:**

> Today's monthly klance prompt is 'crush' and I came up with a bucket of angst. I'm not sure how many of these prompts I'll do this month so this is a stand alone for now. 
> 
> A season 4 compliant story/drabble which I mostly wrote while sleep deprived. So if it sounds like a fever dream...it is one. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It’s a crush. 

 

An ache, inconsistent in it’s ferocity. A bruise, a stab wound, a paper-cut or a lost limb. It breathes a wildness of its own, forest fire spiraling outwards from him, consuming all in its wake and yet, yet no one else seems to know. Keith can exist in his private implosion of emotion, while those around him only live in it’s conclusions. 

 

A smile for a star-fall, a wisecrack for a earthquake. Lance has that power, that ability to change his polar axis. All inside out, upside down. Lance is not what he had anticipated, not something he can control. Loud, in voice and gesture, big in the space he takes up, everywhere to Keith all at once. Smiling, joking, smiling, complaining, smiling, flirting, always  _ smiling _ behind Keith’s closed eyes. Infuriating. Intoxicating. 

 

A crush. 

 

That’s all it is, abnormal for a person who crushed their heart into tiny pieces, placed it a box and locked it up tight. But Lance is an ignition, sets off the spark and turns on the light. The box melts, his heart grows. It’s annoying, so very annoying when Lance wants to race and win, and Keith wants to run right with him because the feeling is exhilarating and the prize is another try. Another moment with him, another dare, another challenge. Another chance to be in Lance’s orbit, if only as a rival. 

 

He isn’t his reflection with Lance. He never raced until he crashed before, but he does now. He never tasted strange drinks to meet a challenge, threw food at other people or laughed until he cried. Didn’t know it was possible to do either simultaneously. Lance makes him live like another self; no _ himself _ that he doesn’t let out. One he didn’t know could still exist. Melt down the walls and there he is, the boy that wants to stop being on the edge of everyone and sit in the centre. 

 

Lance pushes and pulls. Doesn’t remember the day when he bleed out in Keith’s arms, the thrum of his barely-there heartbeat pulling Keith along with _ stay stay _ . Not another gone, not another person he would watch fall away, not when he’d just learned that they could be good. Together. A team. Not just Keith, Keith and someone else. 

 

He doesn’t want a competition, doesn’t keep a scorecard but he’ll take when he can get. Rescues Lance when his flirting causes problems, and jokes, laughs, threatens to leave him alone locked with that tree just to respond on the same level. He is not accustomed to spending this much time with other people that being a copy-cat is all he can do. _ I can push, because you push, I can tease when you tease, it’s okay to let some things go. _ It’s hard, when he’s only just beginning, working out what steps to take, what direction to travel in to make connections. 

 

Lance doesn’t mind though. “We’ll work on it,” not a giggle behind a hand, not a snide remark. It’s all to his face or nothing at all, and he can work with that too. Can move with that. 

 

It fractures his fraying stability when Lance declares he’d never follow him, even though he does. Runs loops in Keith’s head with the words he says, with the gentle taunts and the enthusiastic exclamations.

 

They are rivals because Lance wants that and Keith doesn’t know how to navigate a way through that to friendship because Keith cannot see that pathway. He doesn’t have a map, an indication of how you reach that destination. So he bickers and snipes because Lance is under his skin, irritatingly matching him and baiting him to do things. They are two distinct forces, spiraling away and moving mountains in their separation. 

 

Except when they stop, drawn back, magnetic. Keith has always been a slave to the haste and the initial blast of emotion. All reaction no thought. Run away, fly away, scream away the day. Snap back before they hurt you, hit them before they hit you. He learned through trial and error, from the days in houses too cold and too large, too many children with nothing left. 

 

They think he’s harsh, he cuts losses. They don’t know what holding on gets you. He wants them not to learn, wants to find Pidge’s family so they don’t ever know what it costs you bet all out on love and lose. 

 

So he snaps and he cracks and he always, always ends up the same way. Alone. In mind and in body. 

 

(The desert was the worst; he was 18 and living in a shack alone and no single soul knew or cared. He could swear the walls were talking once, when he was sick and there was no one. He cried for 4 hours another day and only animals heard a thing. There wasn’t anyone to try to hear or see)

 

But now, it’s not the same. When all the dizzying high wears off this time, the dust settles and Lance is there, follows him down to whatever hole he wants to vanish into whenever one of his family leaves again. 

 

He takes the shards of broken ideals from Keith’s scratched up arms and places them in patterns, waiting for Keith to glue them back together. As if he thinks Keith has the instruction manual somewhere in the back of his pocket. 

 

Just a crush. A meandering affliction. 

 

Because Keith doesn’t know how to do this thing, this thing Lance does where he just connects to a person, speaks their language without using words. Keith has words, in multiple dialects, but no string of letters together has meaning. He’s missing something that Lance has in spades. 

 

Nothing more than a crush can come from a circuit that is missing a buzzer. 

 

Lance makes the light shine, crosses the ‘t’s dots the ‘i’s. Has a language for a situation, a trade off. Yet it’s Keith he approaches when he is lost. Keith, because he is the leader. The leader the falls down and cannot get back up without Lance, but Lance cannot seem to see that in his search for answers. He wishes he was sought out not because of a role he doesn’t deserve but because he’s just Keith, and that has meaning beyond titles. But much like the rivalry, he’ll take the part he’s given if only for a small chance to stand on the stage. 

 

Keith tries to allay pain. He gets a smile. A true smile, no mask or filter. He is so weak to that smile and to affection in general. A ghost touch on his shoulder. Unexpected feeling, an unfamiliar accordance of casual affection through skin. 

 

(He can count the names on one hand of those who have touched him without an aim of hurt. Nearly all are family. And nearly all were so long ago).

 

It splinters him into multiples and he doesn’t know how to deal with that. Because Lance has smiles for Keith that he doesn’t show anyone, comes to him with his secret fears and stands by Keith when he’s falling towards the unknown. 

 

But has eyes for The Princess, says the words and has the moves and gestures for her. She doesn’t respond, doesn’t seem to think much of it. But it’s not for Keith, not even anywhere near him. Theirs is a different type of dance and he never knew the steps in the first place and the music just gets faster the more he spins. 

 

What does Lance think, what does Lance want? Keith doesn’t understand, is just pulled in with the tide. 

 

Just a crush, and yet?

 

Yet he hopes, those little moments he can recount, those moments they do collide and it is instantaneous in its rightness. Keith wants to yell about fate and providence but he doesn’t believe in any of that. But then why could he hear the call of Blue, Blue who was meant for Lance, the person who now takes residence in too many of his overwhelming moments. 

 

For that’s what this is, overwhelming. Crush, like crushing, no room to breathe. For when Lance yells his name when he doesn’t look before he leaps, but still swoons at a pretty alien it’s all jumbled, a jumbled mess of too much in his already over stuffed head. 

 

For all Keith’s mind is space and fire because fire and space are all his pasts and futures, all the things he’s ever lost in both places; parents a brother, a brother again. All the things he’s ever gained; a new future, a new purpose, a paladin, his lion. Red, his fire and anger, his will and his passion. 

 

But Red is lost to him too, that mind which attuned to his so deeply, so resonating he finally had thought he had something kindred, something homely. Now Lance has Red, and Keith sees how much that means, wonders if he truly valued being the right arm when it was his role. But Lance steals the show, rises to the fray and speeds into every conflict as if it were always this way. 

 

Keith wants to accuse him of stealing other things too, right out of a cheesy novel, a line from a movie, a line Lance would say. But that’s not him and that’s not true. 

 

Keith wants him to have Red, wonders if Lance can feel their old bond, that it indirectly ties them together in some way. Knows without a doubt Lance will make sure Red is safe, will be the best the team can ever want in her. 

 

Lance thinks he has no place. That couldn’t be further from the truth. He can’t be lifted out easily, slips straight into Red Paladin from Blue. Keith disintegrated once he was out of the race, ashes in Shiro’s shoes. Lance tied them all in place when they had nothing left. 

 

And Keith can never in a thousand life times do that, or thank Lance for what he did in those moments, even though every part of him hums with the need to. 

 

It’s a crush. 

 

It’s nothing heavier. So he can walk away, he is not bound.  Therefore, walk he does. To a different future, to the Blade, where he can trace something to another area of himself, that Galra part, that space self he had never known. Perhaps it will lead him to knowing more about where he came from, something he has pondered for so long. 

 

It leads him away from Lance. Away from team Voltron, who are already strong in themselves. There is no place for a second Red Paladin, and Lance deserves that title. Keith has never said how impressed he is that he could master Red so fast, knowing Red like he does, knowing that she would not give someone unworthy an easy ride. 

 

Lance is more of a Paladin than he’ll ever be. More of a hero than he could dream of. 

 

And Keith is not made for Black. He could not hear him in the way he did Red, impostor syndrome thrumming in every flight, and a wish to trade his very self for his brother to come back. In a way, it’s what he has done. 

 

Keith wonders, as he walks (doesn’t look back, cannot look back because if he did he’d just stay) if he should have said those things. If his capacity for talking about emotions was higher, if he could just use his words in the way that he wanted to and say something to Lance. He isn’t afraid of confrontation, he’s afraid of repercussions that would leave him homeless, or lost like they have before. 

 

And when the team became his home, he doesn’t know. And when Lance became his crush and an intricate part of that home, he can't explain. But in moving away and not burning all his bridges he can return. Hopefully this time, there will still be something there when he does. 

 

And feelings can be buried, can be nursed or pounded into submission. It mostly works. He’s done it before. He can raise the walls again, brick by heavy brick, built by his shaking hands. 

 

After all, it’s only a crush.   
  


Isn’t it? 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/EnlacingL/) and [Tumblr](http://enlacinglineswrites.tumblr.com). Feel free to come and say hi!


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